Aidan came running out of his bedroom tonight. Somewhat freaked, he told me “Eamonn’s face is glowing!” Sure enough, he was right. The inside of the bedroom looked like a cheesy 80’s science fiction movie. Green glowing spots all over the wall and on Eamonn. Someone had been playing with a thin bendy glow stick and it burst. The culprit was covered, sort of like how I imagine dye packs work in a bag of money stolen from a bank.

I was pretty sure that the stuff in a glow stick was non-toxic, but there’s always this piece of a parent that says “he’s covered in radioactive waste!”

Lisa takes the boys to the bathroom to be washed down. My hands are glowing just from taking them out. Strip the sheets, wash the walls, scrub the floor…. wash off toxic stuff from my hands before I turn into a mutant freak… the standard routine.

The kids, however, are a little rattled. In their world, children don’t glow. Lisa grabs the laptop and shows them that the company claims it’s non-toxic with the standard disclaimer of irritation if swallowed. Rinse the boys down again and now they are sleeping in my bed, huddled together for comfort. I haven’t the heart to tell them that Eamonn will probably develop mutant powers sometime later tonight.

Anyhow, if your child ever bursts a glow stick… just wash’em down and move along.

Yeah, that’s one of those thoughts that came to me after we knew that it wouldn’t harm them, but by then they were already washed up. I need to read up on how to photograph luminescent children so I can be prepared for the inevitable next time.

there could be a lot of fun with this at breakfast, tho. Tell him he was levitating while he slept. Or maybe not, levitation leads to rooftop experiments. Tell him he turned into a boy-sized squirrel while he slept.

Actually, Neil, I beg to differ with you about the glowsticks only slightly.

Eleven years ago, when I was 15, I had one burst and spray my left eye. If any of the dye gets in or near an eye, you MUST take them to the hospital to get it flushed out, which is what they had to do to mine. Apparently, only 10% of people don’t have an allergic reaction when the dye gets in their eye, and the other 90% can have bad eye damage, if it’s not treated properly. I happened to be wearing contacts and be in that first 10%; I was lucky.

Now granted, they may have changed what they put in the stuff, since I was a teenager, but it’s something you should be aware of. =)